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This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 423,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Last year's words belong to last year's language

Little Gidding, Part IIBy T.S. Eliot(Written in 1942, during the constant Luftwaffe air raids on London)

Ash on and old man's sleeveIs all the ash the burnt roses leave.Dust in the air suspendedMarks the place where a story ended.Dust inbreathed was a house—The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,The death of hope and despair,This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouthOver the eyes and in the mouth,Dead water and dead sandContending for the upper hand.The parched eviscerate soilGapes at the vanity of toil,Laughs without mirth.This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeedThe town, the pasture and the weed.Water and fire derideThe sacrifice that we denied.Water and fire shall rotThe marred foundations we forgot,Of sanctuary and choir.This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morningNear the ending of interminable nightAt the recurrent end of the unendingAfter the dark dove with the flickering tongueHad passed below the horizon of his homingWhile the dead leaves still rattled on like tinOver the asphalt where no other sound wasBetween three districts whence the smoke aroseI met one walking, loitering and hurriedAs if blown towards me like the metal leavesBefore the urban dawn wind unresisting.And as I fixed upon the down-turned faceThat pointed scrutiny with which we challengeThe first-met stranger in the waning duskI caught the sudden look of some dead masterWhom I had known, forgotten, half recalledBoth one and many; in the brown baked featuresThe eyes of a familiar compound ghostBoth intimate and unidentifiable.So I assumed a double part, and criedAnd heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'Although we were not. I was still the same,Knowing myself yet being someone other—And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficedTo compel the recognition they preceded.And so, compliant to the common wind,Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,In concord at this intersection timeOf meeting nowhere, no before and after,We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:I may not comprehend, may not remember.'And he: 'I am not eager to rehearseMy thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.These things have served their purpose: let them be.So with your own, and pray they be forgivenBy others, as I pray you to forgiveBoth bad and good. Last season's fruit is eatenAnd the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.For last year's words belong to last year's languageAnd next year's words await another voice.But, as the passage now presents no hindranceTo the spirit unappeased and peregrineBetween two worlds become much like each other,So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled usTo purify the dialect of the tribeAnd urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,Let me disclose the gifts reserved for ageTo set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.First, the cold friction of expiring senseWithout enchantment, offering no promiseBut bitter tastelessness of shadow fruitAs body and soul begin to fall asunder.Second, the conscious impotence of rageAt human folly, and the lacerationOf laughter at what ceases to amuse.And last, the rending pain of re-enactmentOf all that you have done, and been; the shameOf motives late revealed, and the awarenessOf things ill done and done to others' harmWhich once you took for exercise of virtue.Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.From wrong to wrong the exasperated spiritProceeds, unless restored by that refining fireWhere you must move in measure, like a dancer.'The day was breaking. In the disfigured streetHe left me, with a kind of valediction,And faded on the blowing of the horn.

Thanks, T.S., you douche, for ruining poetry promotion for the rest of us.

Although, Eliot's influence on poetry probably indirectly inspired the Beats to make poetry relevant again and also Marc "So What?" Smith to create slam to make it populist.

Poetry should be understandable. As language is meant to convey ideas from author to reader, speaker to listener, thus poetry, being language in its most polished form, should convey ideas in the clearest (William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow") or most elegant (John Milton's "Paradise Lost") or most bluntly straightforward (a slam satire) or most beautiful (Shane Koyczan's "The Crickets Have Arthritis" or Derrick C. Brown's "A Finger, Two Dots, Then Me") or most moving (Andrea Gibson's "Still") means -- depending on the poet, style and voice.

"The Waste Land" is the antithesis of poetry's purpose. It is forcefully convoluted with such obscure allusionary references that only Eliot scholars can sit down and read the thing without a footnoted guidebook to understand it. It also uses Greek, Italian and Sanskrit, none of which have I be fluent in since ... the accident ... and seem to have been added only to show off how wise and worldly, and better than you, Eliot was.

And if you thought Eliot was a dick, you haven't met an Eliot scholar yet.

A Eliot scholar is the guy at the party who'll tell you why the 1998 E. Guigal Cote Rotie Brune et Blonde - which he says he's drinking - is vastly superior to the 1999 Alain Graillot Crozes Hermitage, which you're drinking -- although you just don't care to tell him you just helped the party's host fill those two bottles of expensive-looking wine from the same tap of Almaden box wine and, fuck, you only stopped to talk to this guy so your roommate could make moves on the hot hipster chick this douche-bag brought, and as soon as he gets her number and sets up a date, you're fuckin' out of here and headed to another party where the girl you like is double-fisting a pint of Guinness and a bottle of Jameson, like the kick-ass cool chick you love her for -- fuck, is this guy still talking?

CFG the slam poet

Fox the Poet

Christopher Fox Grahamis a Montana-born boy raised in Arizona to be a poet, artist, and singer with unending wanderlust. He's fascinated with art and other shiny things, a good story will keep him captivated and silent as he soaks you in.

In truth, he is good at only three things: using language, kissing, and driving.

He has performed for MTV and on The Travel Channel's "Your Travel Guide" episode of Sedona. Aside from winning more than 100 poetry slams, he's published four books of poetry, most recently The Opposite of Camouflage, and won the 2012 Dylan Thomas Award for Excellence in the Written and Spoken Word.

A slam poet since 2001, he currently hosts the bimonthly Sedona Poetry Slam in West Sedona.

For nearly four years, he was the senior Copy Editor of the Sedona Red Rock News, and an arts reporter and a columnist. He wrote a weekly column "Sedona Underground," about the city's art scene. After leaving in May 2008, he was asked to return as Assistant Managing Editor in October 2009. He was promoted to News Editor in April 2012 and in August 2012 was promoted to Managing Editor, overseeing the Sedona Red Rock News,The Camp Verde Journal, Cottonwood Journal Extra, The Scene and The Village View.

He has won numerous personal and editorial newsroom awards from the Arizona Newspapers Association, including three awards for Best Headline.

He was the managing editor of Kudos, a weekly arts and entertainment publication of the Verde Independent. He was also managing editor of The Villager, a weekly news publication in the Village of Oak Creek.

He is one the six coordinators of GumptionFest a kickass, annual, one-day grassroots arts festival held in Sedona, this year in September. More than 100 artists and bands exhibit their work for free to more than 1,200 people.

In 2005, he founded the Sedona Poetry Open Mic, which he hosted biweekly at Java Love Cafe on second and fourth Tuesdays until 2012. A former venue included Random Acts of Coffee, in Sedona, which closed in June 2005. The venue named a drink after him which one can order an various coffeehouses in Sedona. The "Topher": A large soy chai with two (or three) shots of espresso. Serve iced or hot. He was member of the city of Sedona Child and Youth Commission for two years and chairman for another two years before the commission was dissolved in 2008.

He has been unofficially named "The Voice of the Underground," in Sedona for his column "Sedona Underground" that appeared every Friday in The Scene. for more than three years, featuring more than 150 artists.

He won the 2004 NORAZ Poets Grand Slam, the 2005 Arizona All-Star Poetry Slam, and was a member of the 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012 and 2013 Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Teams. He was also a National Poetry Slam bout manager in 2003, venue manager in 2011, and Sedona Slammaster in 2012, 2013 and 2014, sponsoring the city's first three Sedona National Poetry Slam Teams.

He believes that all slam poets are Jedis.

He has been thrown out of six movie theaters, 18 bars, a Las Vegas nightclub with his girlfriend, a public pool, two malls, four golf courses, one bowling alley, five dorms, one airport, one pet store, a now-defunct nonprofit poetry organization ... and Canada. Seriously.